The Renewable Energy Opportunities and Eastern Oregon Landscape Conservation Partnership was established to collaboratively address the needs and issues inherent to renewable energy development and habitat conservation across Eastern Oregon. Partners sought to collaborative approaches to mutually address issues, beginning with sagebrush and sage grouse issues, to determine criteria for identifying areas in Eastern Oregon that have potential for new energy development as well as those areas where there are significant challenges to development.

Objectives

The collaborative partnership project is working to:

Create and maintain a neutral forum with transparent dialogue to effectively collaborate on strategies for continued protection and restoration of sagebrush and other important Eastern Oregon landscapes, and development of renewable energy opportunities.

Build on the existing memorandum of agreement between BLM and the Oregon Department of Energy (February 2009) to share environmental analysis of energy facility citing proposals for federal NEPA processes and state energy facility citing processes.

Collaborate, where appropriate, on review of applications for local, state and federal permits, leases and other siting authorizations, and on issuance of authorizations and associated conditions within the bounds of each agency’s statutory authority.

Identify opportunities for collaboration in support of consistent implementation of conservation and mitigation strategies for important habitats across Eastern Oregon, including sagebrush habitat.

Build on existing maps and share information as it becomes available to create maps identifying areas for potential development and areas with resource challenges to be used as guidance documents for state and federal agencies, local governments and developers (“challenges and opportunities maps”), and to use maps as a tool to foster transparent dialogue.